(under the heading that all software sucks)

Well, I’m just a jolly ftp code producing junky… I’ve even made working with an ANCIENT box running (ha) windows 2000 and IIS as a FTP server almost not painful.

And my code relies on this assumption: that I can’t rename/delete a file while another user is playing uploading it.

IIS (which uses the NTFS permissions) supports this.

So fantastic news! We can bring this box out of the stone age!  And we can upgrade it to run Linux, since I can script all the administration work, and take a 40 minute process down to about 4 seconds!  Happiness and Joy abound.

Then I run a test, and the Ext3 Filesystem will let you delete/rename files while someone else is writing to them.  Both things ‘Just Work’[1].  However, I can’t rely on my previous assumption any more, so I’m going to have to dive into the most complex part of my code, and write something ELSE in there to handle this case… and since the business is insisting on REALLY SHORT SWEEP INTERVALS, that increases the odds that I’m going to trample on something if I don’t take care of it now.

Everybody now:

“All software sucks, all hardware sucks.”

[1] This is even a good thing… it makes real/useful tempfiles possible and secure.

Today wasn’t much fun.  We finally got the (omitted) process codified enough, and trained the entire team on it.

Call from $BOSS… at 3:35 PM.  “We need you and $COWORKER in this meeting.”  The meeting is 5 minutes in, and we’re talking about the (omitted) process.  It’s already implemented, so we’re talking about it… no worries.  Then $BOSSES_BOSS  starts suggesting LOTS of changes.  Changing the fundemental assumption around which the (omitted) process is built.

Grrrr…. So there’s an off site meeting of the managers (over a beer) tonight to sort out this mess, and we’ll be informed… of their decision… about technical architecture… tomorrow.

JOY!

So. Accountability groups rock. This is a standard view of most Christians these days. What’s especially awesome is when someone in said group really drops an honesty bomb on the rest of the members… where someone admits to something sorta big/serious (like ‘I’ve been cheating on my spouse’, or ‘My spouse and I are trying to start a family’, or ‘I struggle with homosexual thoughts’…).

These honesty moments are the greese that keeps a group healthy and strong and bonded. The challenge is keeping the group 1) open/accepting of those moments 2) ready to respond to them in a holy and healthy way, 3) what to do in the ‘dry spells’ between these bombs, and 4) Not letting a lack of these ‘bombs’ make it seem like the group isn’t ‘open’ to new honesty.

More to come on this topic (and how it relates to reconciliation)